Machine to machine (M2M) refers to all techniques and means for establishing a connection between machines. The theory of M2M has appeared in the 90s of last century, but was still theoretical. Since 2000, with the development of mobile communication technologies, connecting machines to a network has become possible by virtue of the mobile communication technologies. M2M services have appeared in the market of 2002, and developed rapidly in the next few years and becomes the focus of various communication device manufacturers and telecommunication operators. At present, the amount of machines throughout the globe is much larger than that of people, so that the M2M technology is quite prospective in market.
Research on the scenario of M2M communication application shows that providing M2M communication over a mobile network has a great potential market. However, many new requirements have been proposed for M2M services, and in order to enhance the competitiveness of the mobile network in providing the M2M communication, it is necessary to optimize the existing mobile network to more effectively support the M2M communication.
The mobile communication network in the related art is mainly designed for man-to-man communication, and is not sufficiently optimized for machine-to-machine and man-to-machine communication. In addition, it is also a key to success of M2M communication deployment that an operator can provide M2M communication services at a low cost. Based on the above-mentioned reasons, a solution for the mobile network to support the M2M communication appears in the related art. The solution needs to reuse the existing network to a maximum limit, and reduce the influence on the network by large amount of M2M communication and the complexity of operation and maintenance.
The competition in the current telecommunication market is more and more fierce, and the tariff is continuously decreasing, which continuously reduces the benefit of operators. The human based communication market is tending to be saturated, and M2M is a brand new development opportunity to the operators.
In order to effectively utilize mobile network resource, the 3rd generation partnership project (3GPP) has proposed a machine type communication (MTC), i.e. a service of communication from machine to machine or machine to man, the range of the service goes far beyond the traditional communication of Human to Human (H2H). The MTC differs from the existing H2H communication mode a lot in various aspects, such as access control, charging, security, quality of service (QoS), service mode, etc.
In 3GPP evolved packet system (EPS) architecture, the EPS includes a radio access network (such as a UMTS universal terrestrial radio access network (UTRAN), an evolved UTRAN (E-UTRAN), a GSM/EDGE radio access network (GERAN)) and a core network. For example, there are network elements such as a mobile management entity (MME), a serving gateway and a packet data network (PGN) gateway (PGW) in an evolved packet core (EPC) network. A GPRS core network includes network elements such as a serving general packet radio service support node (SGSN). The E-UTRAN includes evolved node B (eNB).
MTC device trigger (Device Trigger) is one of the basic requirements for an MTC system. This requirement focuses on the following problem: in order to control communication of an MTC device, the method of initiating a poll by an MTC server may be used for the communication; and for the communication initiated by the MTC device, the MTC server sometimes also needs to poll data from the MTC device. If query of the MTC server fails or an IP address of the MTC device is unavailable, then the MTC server may use the MTC device trigger to establish communication with the MTC device. If a network cannot trigger the MTC device, the network reports to the MTC server that the MTC device trigger fails. The MTC device trigger is realized in the 3GPP through control plane signalling.
The MTC device trigger includes mobile originated (MO) and mobile terminating (MT) services, that is, includes the MTC device transmitting or receiving information.
In order to realize effective transmission of an MTC device trigger request, proposed solutions includes: transmitting MTC device trigger information through a short message (SMS), or transmitting the MTC device trigger information through control plane signalling. As regards the method for transmitting the MTC device trigger information through the control plane signalling, the MTC server transmits the control plane signalling containing the MTC device trigger information to a network node; and the network node parses the MTC device trigger information in the control plane signalling, and then transmits the MTC device trigger information to a user equipment (UE). The MTC architecture in the 3GPP is as shown in FIG. 1. In the user plane, an MTC application device which is connected with an MTC user communicates with a sequence control system (SCS) of an MTC server control system through an application programming interface (API), or directly communicates with a gateway GPRS support node (GGSN)/PGW/evolved packet data gateway (EPDG) in the 3GPP network through a Gi/SGi interface; the MTC server communicates with the GGSN/PGW/EPDG through the Gi/SGi interface; and the GGSN/PGW/EPDG communicates with a user equipment (UE) through a radio access network (RAN). In the control plane, the MTC server transmits the MTC device trigger information to an MTC interworking function (MTC-IWF) through a Tsp interface; and the MTC-IWF transmits the MTC device trigger information to a short message service-service centre (SMS-SC)/IP-short-message-gateway (IP-SM-GW) through a T4 interface, or the MTC-IWF transmits the trigger information to an MME/SGSN/mobile-services switching centre (MSC) through a T5 interface, and the trigger information is then transmitted to the UE through the RAN, wherein the MME/SGSN may also obtain subscription data from a home subscriber server (HSS) or a home location register (HLR) through an S6a/S6d interface.
The requirement for grouping MTC devices is proposed in 3GPP TS22.368. The grouping of the MTC devices includes: a system associates one MTC device to a single MTC group; each group-based MTC function is applicable to each member of the MTC group; and the identity of the MTC group is unique in the 3GPP network. Group members are generally located in the same area, such as the same tracking area (TA)/routing area (RA)/location area (LA)/eNB.
TR23.888 has a requirement for triggering multiple MTC devices at the same time, for example, an MTC server wants to collect status information of multiple MTC devices. In this case, the multiple MTC devices may be located in different areas, or the multiple MTC devices may not belong to the same MTC group.
In view of the problem in the related art that multiple MTC devices not belonging to the same MTC group cannot be triggered at the same time, no effective solution has been proposed so far.